# What we log, and for how long

Updated: 24 September 2026. The Cost Per Trade pricing desk

## In short

A visit to a sheet on this domain produces one record: the line a web server writes as it hands the
file over. Writing to the desk produces a second, which is the mail itself. This page says what is in
each, how long it stays on the machine, and what leaves it. Nothing leaves it.

## The line the server writes

One line goes into the access log for every request, and it carries six things:

- the network address the request came from;
- the day and the second it arrived;
- the sheet or file asked for, with the method used to ask for it;
- the status sent back, and the number of bytes that went out with it;
- the browser or crawler string the request announced itself with;
- the page a link was followed from, when the browser volunteers one.

That is the line in full. A crawler is written down in the same six fields as a reader, and nothing
of this desk's is added to them: this site hands out no identifier of its own, so there is nothing
of that kind to write down. A request that cannot be answered is noted a second time in the server's file for
failures, with the address, the page asked for and the reason.

## Fourteen days on the machine

The log file is turned over each night, and the copy holding the oldest lines is deleted on the
fourteenth day. Nothing is taken out of a file before it goes: no totals, no charts, no visit count
kept somewhere longer-lived. Two weeks after a sheet was read, the reading of it is off the server
for good.

What those lines are for, while they exist, is narrow. Whether the sheets are reaching the readers
and crawlers asking for them, and whether a burst of requests is a person reading or a script
working down the price list. They are read by the people who publish the sheets. They are not sold,
not swapped, not handed to an advertiser or a broker, and not joined to anything else in order to
put a name to an address. The server is rented, which leaves the company renting it out able to
reach the disk the file sits on; that is the whole list of parties.

## What this domain does not run

- No cookie is set and none is read, for a session or for anything longer.
- No analytics property, tag container or visitor counter runs on these sheets.
- Nothing tags an address to say which click brought a reader in, and no remarketing or
  advertising pixel sits on a sheet.
- Nothing on a sheet is fetched from another company while it is being read: the stylesheet, both
  typefaces and every figure are files on this domain, so opening a sheet tells nobody else that it
  was opened.
- There is no account, no sign-in, no comment box, no newsletter and no search field, which leaves
  nowhere to type and so nothing typed for this desk to keep.
- Every sheet is built before it is asked for and sent as a finished file, with no script of ours
  running in the reader's browser.

## Mail, and having it deleted

desk@thundermessage.com is the one address published here. A message sent to it stays in
the mailbox, with the address it came from, while the question is open, and where it corrected a
rate it stays until the corrected sheet has gone out. It goes on no list and is shown to nobody
outside the desk.

Ask at the same address to hear what is still held from an exchange, to have the thread deleted, or
to have a log line removed while the file holding it is still on the machine. The reply comes from
the desk. Where the links on a sheet lead, and what the operator at the other end does with the
visit, is covered on [terms, disclaimer and privacy](/terms-and-disclaimer).


This price desk is paid to publish, and a venue on the sheet may be the party that paid; the order of every column is the published formula.